Surgical Preparation & Response

First, the big news! 
​Our electricity is coming back on tomorrow!
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It’s been a loooong 9 months! Did we mention that we appreciate you? Like a lot? Our amazing patients have stood by us and supported us and displayed patience with all the quirks of our self powered office these past months. You all are amazing! We’re so grateful for you. PGE and the great folks at Sun Solar are getting us set up this afternoon and we should be switched over to PGE power tomorrow morning!

There may be utility trucks in our parking lot today and tomorrow as this process gets buttoned up. And there will be some construction noise coming from next door this afternoon. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. There is still lots of street parking available on La Plaza.

A Few Notifications

• Our scheduling process is updating. We are now including a link to reschedule in all of our correspondences with patients (every text, email, etc that you get in reference to you visits will include a link to schedule. No need to go to our website, just follow the link in your emails/texts.)
• In turn, we are limiting scheduling on our website. We do a lot of different things in our office, from deep dives into laboratory testing to massage, and we want to be there to guide our new patients into the services that are most appropriate for their health goals. For you all, our seasoned expert patients, you know what you need! Just click on the links in your emails or texts (or above!) to schedule.
• We will be updating our scheduling software over the next month. The clinicians are getting up to speed on our new system and we’ll switch over sometime in the coming weeks. The portal you use to schedule will change and we’ll need to set up new accounts for you. I’m so sorry for the extra work, but the new system we’re looking at appears to be a lot more streamlined and user friendly. We’ve been talking to a lot of other offices, soliciting input and everyone, patients and clinicians alike, really like the system we’re switching to.
• The new schedule for the Community Acupuncture room is up for June! See below!

Surgical Preparation & Response

One of the things that I love about the medicine that we do is how seamlessly it integrates with allopathic Medicine to improve outcomes and smooth out the side effects for people requiring more invasive treatment. Surgery is a traumatizing process in ways that are physical, emotional and biochemical. We support you in all these areas.

Musculature and joints can benefit from a tune-up. When surgical incisions cross important fascial planes or muscles the body responds by reducing neurological connection to those structures. Whether that means that a muscle now only fires at 50%, or the sensory information from proprioceptive nerve fibers aren’t received by the brain, the result is the same: altered movement movement. Acupuncture should be incorporated into a post-surgical protocol in the first weeks to ensure that these pathways are opened back up and functioning properly. Adding physical therapy to that protocol can also be helpful at times. The musculoskeletal impact of surgery can be far reaching. It isn’t uncommon for example, to find altered right shoulder function that resolves dramatically when old surgical scars from old appendectomy surgeries area address in the lower right abdominal area.

Nutritional supplementation can also be helpful, and primarily in the weeks leading up to surgery. The crucial factor is ensuring that all the necessary nutrients and structural building blocks are present in the body in sufficient amounts to allow for a healthy recovery. It’s always better to start out with sufficient body stores of the nutrients you’ll be using rather than trying to supplement them after they’ve already been depleted. The processes we want to support include wound healing, immune function, liver detoxification, and general body resilience. Starting at least a few weeks prior to surgery we want to add the following nutrients: Vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, silica, collagen, vitamin C, and bioflavanoid complexes. These nutrients support your surgical preparation by reducing the risk of community acquired infections like MRSA, providing the building blocks for new skin and collagen formation and ensuring sufficient resilience to keep your body healing without stressing your body functions excessively.

Following surgery, there are various herbal formulations that may be appropriate depending on your presentation. Personally, the formula Bu Zhong Yi Qi Tang has been very helpful for me in recovering energy following surgery. However, the specific formulation for you will depend on your overall constitution.
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Finally, post surgical ileus is a common complication of abdominal surgeries where the peristaltic function of the bowels doesn’t return immediately. This can be supported through various tools in our trade including herbal medicine, acupuncture, and the prescription of specific Qi Gong exercises. This exercise specifically recovered my function in minutes and prevented the need for a scheduled enema when in the hospital following an abdominal surgery while I was still in acupuncture school:

Want more information?
Download our free guide to surgical preparation here:
https://www.cotaticommunityacupuncture.com/surgical-preparation.html
Looking forward to seeing you in the clinic!

Best,
Kieran Jones